I think that the SL community is trusting, and most people will just take your word that you are, who you say you are. Unfortunately, this is no longer possible due to some people misrepresenting themselves.
Recently, I’ve read more and more stories about avatars claiming to be the alt of known bloggers, affiliated with established blogs, or outright claiming to be a store manager for brands they do not work for, in order to scam people out of money or receive freebies from unsuspecting designers.
My friend Melanie had to deal with one person named kellycrowed resident, repeatedly scraping her blog content and telling designers that he/she blogged on Grid Expectations.
I have linked to Melanie’s post about kellycrowed, along with a post about The DNA of Fraud on Shopping Cart Disco, so you guys can read about it and be aware of this new scam!
All right, I only just started blogging again and already some jerk has been going around contacting designers and pretending that he is my fellow blogger on this website. His name is kellycrowed and he also uses the name/display name Kid Dope.
Kid Dope does not blog here
Read more on Grid Expectations
A recent rash of complaints on Plurk, Flickr and other fora detail the proliferation of requests for promotional or review copies coming from what appears to be one or more people with several alts who misrepresent who they are and where they blog. Creators report refusing one person and minutes later getting another solicitation identical down to the errors in syntax from a second person. It seems reasonable to assume they are the same person operating multiple alts. One creator mentioned getting a request every hour for eight hours. This is frustrating and tiresome.
The DNA of Fraud
Read more on Shopping Cart Disco
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I have been getting a lot of “automated” review copy requests too. Some are the same word for word also. What exactly is the point of this? It’s not as if everything is transfer. I also got a request for some from a blogger a while back who’s images and articles all looked ripped from other blogs as the style was extremely different.
Now I have a little group for sending review copies and only allow people in it if I have spoken to them a reasonable amount. Odd people!
The point, as I understand it, is that they have figured out how to copybot everything, including mesh and this person does not even want to pay the original price in order to copybot items. So they have devised this elaborate scheme in order to get free blogger review copies. The sole intent seems to be once they have the review copies, they are copying them and then reselling them. Whether or not the item is transfer or not does not matter to people copying items- they can do it anyway. Thank you for letting us know as a community, Gogo.
What I don’t understand is why the elaborate ruse is necessary. Awhile back I saw a video someone made in order to inform the public about copybots. The avatar was able to walk around and copy literally everything around him, all the textures, prims, everything! The vidoeo was on youtube when I watched it. Copybotters have never bought anything. They just walk around and take it all. Is there something different about how mesh must be copybotted that has made this elaborate ruse necessary?
i agree with melanie that this guy is up to NO GOOD with the review items he’s trying to scam. all the work he has put into getting this scheme going could have been used setting up a real blog, but real blogs take time to become popular so you know he wants the stuff NOW so he can start pumping out copybotted items asap.
what an a**hole.
I’ve had issues with him too. He often messages various people asking to ‘borrow’ linden for his rent as it is due.
Sorry kiddo, no.
learnt my lesson on laq, some kind imed me asking for money for a skin 700ls, me being a nice kinda person, gave it to him expecting a thankyou, nope he tped out asap and blocked me. i know its not the same as what this person is doing, but its along the same lines
Things like this are getting pretty bad. I read a comment on plurk that said LL should make everyone have a paid membership or have payment info on file and I totally agree. I think it would help a lot for some RL details to be on file and possibly get rid of some people who only want to try to get things for free.
Can’t you set messages so that only friends can im you? If your a designer your customers will have to send notecards instead of messages. Not sure how practical this is… but it may work for some.
People used to have to have “payment info on file” to be in SL when I first started (on another account) 6 years ago. Everything was more expensive, but I remember it taking 6 months for someone to even seriously irritate me because there was no perceived anonymity. I never heard of scams like this back then either. Of course, SL was smaller back then. I can’t decide if it was better.
LOL! That DOPE was all up in box demanding that I friend him just a few days ago, and his odd demeanor was enough to tell me he was off. Like ..what sort of stranger DEMANDS you accept a FR, just weird.
All these wannabes are so incredibly annoying; it’s like, for the amount of energy expended, can’t they do something of their own, instead of riding someone else’s train? I became inured to demandy friend requests a long long time ago; I play a popular RP char on an alt and I just ignore ignore ignore, but people can be aggressive like you wouldn’t believe (rolls eyes). I firmly believe that I have no obligation to an unsolicited friend request from someone I have no relationship with, and it is bad manners to try to force a FR on someone who doesn’t want one.
This guy messaged me a few minutes ago asking to blog for me but said he didn’t want the clothes, he wanted my eyes templates I flat out told him no and that I didn’t trust it. Also claimed he blogged for some stores. I told him no, then he asked for a 50% discount (LOL) still told him no. There should be better security measures for merchants, this is getting ridiculous…he’s the second person to try to get some freebies from me!